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Monday, December 15, 2008

BRAVO! Best of Theater 2008

Anything put on stage that we could watch, we watched--the breadth of talent and imagination on display always a balm of hope

It wasn’t the best of times, it wasn’t the worst of times. Put another way, it was more of the same for the Manila theater scene in 2008.

The contradictions are striking: The most lavish production to set up shop this year, Broadway Asia’s “Cinderella,” played to packed houses right up to its closing show, even with premium tickets that went as high as P7,000--the steepest prices for a Manila musical in recent memory.

Other musicals, such as Stages’ “West Side Story,” Atlantis Productions’ “Hairspray” and Repertory Philippines’ long-running children’s show “Mulan,” also did well despite--or perhaps because of--the tough times. Pricier tickets notwithstanding, musical extravaganzas are often seen as a feel-good respite from the bleak world just outside the theater doors.

As always, drama companies offering more probing, serious fare can’t hold a candle to that. The 13-year-old New Voice Company, for instance, failed to mount a season play this year--a first in its history. Its only offering was a special one-night (though star-studded) event featuring a retread of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.”

Actor’s Actors’ Inc., which had a late-breaking production last year with “Children’s Letters to God,” was nowhere on the calendar in 2008. Tanghalang Pilipino, meanwhile, scaled back its season productions from four to three--though it did have a surprise hit in David Henry Hwang’s “The Golden Child,” which it successfully marketed to schools and the Chinese-Filipino community.

Overall, a hit-and-miss record, but something not dissimilar to previous years’. Theater will plod along, it’s clear--an oddly comforting reminder, given how the economic malaise, abetted by the continuing fragmentation of pop culture and entertainment, has steadily elbowed theater to the margins.

Here’s a round-up of the best of Manila theater in 2008. Anything put on stage that we could watch (given the vagaries of time and work constraints), we watched--the breadth of talent and imagination on display always a balm of hope.

(Disclosure: We failed to catch Gantimpala Theater’s “Ang Pagong at ang Matsing” and Tanghalang Ateneo’s “The Death of Memory,” both of which won Aliw Awards [for Best Musical and Best Play, respectively] this year. Their non-inclusion here is not a judgment on their merits.)

Best Play (One-Act)“Ang Kalungkutan ng Mga Reyna” (Floy Quintos, writer/director). The subsequent Palanca hardware only confirmed what theatergoers at the 2008 Virgin Labfest had known; this was a play of stylish wit and dramatic provocation (what if the country’s woman president decided to become--curtsy now--a queen?), with a grand central performance by Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino.

Best Play (Full-Length)“The Golden Child” (David Henry Hwang; Loy Arcenas, dir.). A splendid production marked by eloquent staging and fluid direction, nearly flawless acting by a great cast, visually stunning scenery and costumes, and the sharp, epigrammatic richness of David Henry Hwang’s lines.

Best Actor-PlayJosé Mari Avellana (“Tuesdays with Morrie”). A magnificent performance that embraced big emotions without a shred of pulp or sentimentality, rendering his dying professor’s character all the more indelible in your memory.

Best Actress-PlayCherie Gil (“Master Class”). The glamorous actress had a tricky high-wire act to do: play Maria Callas as a character, not an impersonation, while casting off her own outsize persona as the local movies’ eminent queen of mean. She delivered--nay, conquered.

Best Featured Actor-PlayRody Vera (“Otelo, ang Moro ng Venecia”). We’re sticking by what we gleefully wrote of his Iago: “The watchword of his performance is malice--a pure, angst-free peevishness that takes impish delight at his evolving ability to upend lives and bend the truth to his will.”

Best Featured Actress-PlayCris Villonco (“Hamlet”). With her touching Ophelia, Villonco served notice that she would be the year’s brightest re-discovery (she left the scene for a while to finish her US studies)--a young actress now stronger, more radiant in her grown-up self-assurance.

Best Actress-MusicalCris Villonco (“Orosman at Zafira”). Showing impressive range, her spellbinding turn in this tremendously taxing musical cemented the luminous promise she had shown in the near-simultaneous--and worlds apart--run of Rep’s “Hamlet.” That we would lose her talents later in the year to HK Disneyland was quite a tragedy.

Best Featured Actor-MusicalNyoy Volante (“Hairspray”). Who knew the pop singer more well-known for his mellow acoustic crooning could burn the floor and shake the rafters with his charismatic, extra-groovy dancing and singing as Seaweed J. Stubbs?

Best Featured Actress-MusicalRowena Vilar (“West Side Story”). Unknown in these parts before Stages’ “West Side Story,” Vilar exploded on the Meralco Theater stage with jaw-dropping panache as the spitfire Anita. A sensational RP debut for the Australia-based actress.

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